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Poker Strategy - Reading Your Opponents II

Posted on March 13, 2008

In part one of this article, I talked about getting a feel for your poker table and also to gauge your opponents. We’ve only explored areas of the game where you can pick up information simply by observing what goes on around you. Let’s expand further on tactics you can use to get a read on your opponents.

Raising to Acquire Information

In addition to information you can pick up by observation, even when you’ve folded and aren’t involved in a hand, you can actually take an action to generate a reaction. Raising is the most useful tool at your disposal for gathering information at the table. More specifically, you can use it to gather information about the hand you are currently involved in. I assume that you can pinpoint who’s aggressive and who’s more conservative at the table. Now, you can try to raise them and see what happens.

As you know, poker card games aren’t really about cards. When you sense weakness at the table, a raise will indicate strength on your part. Whether you have good cards or not is irrelevant. What matters is what your opponents *think* you have. So when few players are involved in a hand, a raise can be used to see if the players are still interested in the hand, or are at the point where they want out of it. The amount of your raise is critical and you have to make that decision based on who you are raising, how many players are involved, how much is in the pot, your table position and the position of aggressive and passive players, the community cards if any, etc. Based on reactions to your raise (calls, folds, reraises), then you get a better sense of where you stand in the hand.

A Small Raise is a Big Investment

When you’re involved in a hand and have no clue where you stand in terms of hand strength in relation to your opponents, try a small raise. This is what you call a “feeler bet” and it well help to situate yourself better. Think of it as a small investment. If you loose it, it’s not the end of the world. A small can go a long way in earning you pots, and in avoiding traps where you might loose a lot. In the long run, you’re little raises here and there will equip you with better information which enables you to make better decisions.

Learning Exercise

There’s only so much you can learn from reading a poker strategy article, so why don’t you go try out a little poker experiment. You may want to stick to low limits for this one, but don’t bother trying this at play money tables. Since people have nothing to loose, they’ll cal anything and make stupid plays you generally don’t see at the money tables.

Here’s what I want you to do. Join a 6 player table and play your game using the following rules: You can only raise or fold. You cannot call. This means that you will likely fold a lot and won’t be involved in too many hands. The idea here is that you want to pick your spots where you can get people to fold. So this will require an analysis on your part on the elements described in part one of the article. Pick your target, pick your spot. The exercise also serves another purpose, where you get to see how people react to your raise, which is what this second part of the article talks about.

Don’t expect to come out a winner. Be ready to blow $20 and do this for a few hours. Try a different table every hour, and try a 10 player table at then end. Pay particular attention to the table feel, the player’s images and your table position. Take notes of what you learn. Try raising a conservative player when your middle position, then try the same thing with an aggressive player. Note the reactions. Do these exercises multiple times because it’s critical to base your conclusions on the whole experience rather then one specific instance. As I said, be ready to loose a little money. Trust me; this is a poker lesson worth paying for! This is an investment, and it’s only the beginning.

In Conclusion

In poker, reading is the most important skill to develop because it leads to others, like bluffing. If you can’t learn to read opponents, don’t bother trying to learn how to bluff because you’ll never be good at it. Getting a good read is also important because it can keep you out of trouble. Part three of this article will be released next week and it will talk about game triggers that can help you read the table situation better.

This article is provided by MyPokerCorner.com

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- Poker Strategy - Reading Your Opponents I
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